Identity Politics: the impasse, the debate, the thread.

[Smokeandsteam]

I feel like valuable opportunities are missed when grassroots voices and protests are dismissed because they contain elements that align with liberal outcomes. Up and down the country (as a consequence of BLM) ideas like 'Marxism' and 'defund the police' are being discussed on footy forums, etc. For a lot of young people particularly this will be the first time they've even seen these notions considered to any serious degree. To just turn your nose up at it all seems like a big misstep. I think that the energy and thinking that leads people to stand up for injustices they are directly reeling from can (and often does) lead to a wider consciousness around structural oppression.

I’m not sure I recognise the point you make. I’ve not seen any turning of noses up here.

However, it’s right - especially given that this is a message board and a theory forum - that people can dig into matters with greater detail.

It’s right to examine what demands are raised and where they might lead and who stands to benefit from them. It’s a good idea to understand what is being constructed, by who and for what purpose. It’s also critical that we understand why some of the narratives being constructed have been seized on and championed so enthusiastically by the opposition. Why? For what ends and purposes?

Most importantly of all, we should remember, as Paul Gilroy write that “different patterns of racial activity and political struggle will appear in determinate historical conditions. They are not conceived as a straightforward alternative to class struggle at the level of economic analysis, but must be recognised to be potentially both an alternative to class consciousness at a political level and as a factor in the contingent processes in which classes themselves are formed”.

 

[danny la rouge]

To just turn your nose up at it all seems like a big misstep.

I think it would be. But I don’t see it happening here.

 

[alsoknownas]

I’m not sure I recognise the point you make. I’ve not seen any turning of noses up here.

I think it would be. But I don’t see it happening here.

Yes, I've been re-reading the middle part of the thread the past couple of days and I'm a lot more encouraged. To be honest I found that Dissent article (on cultural appropriation) quite scarily off the mark and was surprised it was getting such good reviews. But I'll admit - there are a wider range of views on BLM than I had garnered at the time. Much more that I'm eager to discuss...

 

[alsoknownas]

Kenan Malik on Truss's speech, and he's spot on that it is bland and substance-free fare. Part of a 'faux-egalitarian agenda' that proposes nothing to redress actual inequalites.

The Tory ‘class agenda’ is a culture war stunt that will leave inequality untouched | Kenan Malik

Equalities minister Liz Truss claims that the government will dump ‘woke orthodoxy’ for the politics of fairness. But where are the policies?

www.theguardian.com

But clearly we are in for some kind of attempted 'culture war'. Will any of it stick? Is it too late now for conservatives to try to turn the ship around on cultural 'righteousness' in the wider sphere?

For instance - there's a pitch here (nothing new of course) to make the 'white working class' the forgotten cause. Malik neatly points out what a vicious piece of hypocrisy this is, but will it find success? I could see sentiments like this potentially pushing people away from left wing ideas and towards a Tory-led world view that appears to champion them.

Thankfully I can also see the whole thing falling flat on it's arse . The ideas are not very strong, and Truss does not seem anywhere near as incisive as the people squealing around her seem to think. I think her back story is a big part of what makes the party so excited about her.

 

[killer b]

Does Malik ever recognise the role of his former comrades in the RCP with their role in the shaping of the faux egalitarian agenda of Truss' speech?

 

[alsoknownas]

Does Malik ever recognise the role of his former comrades in the RCP with their role in the shaping of the faux egalitarian agenda of Truss' speech?

In what respect?

 

[killer b]

In what respect?

The most vigorous and vocal advocates of the Faux Egalitarian Agenda he outlines in the article are his former comrades-in-arms. I've read a lot of Malik's articles over the years, and those guys never seem to feature (or haven't in any I've read) - despite them being one of the main drivers of this ideology in the media, and despite a number of them now being in Downing Street itself (and, I suspect, on Liz Truss' speechwriting team).

I think it's an odd omission, and I sometimes feel that Malik might be the left flank of the former RCP tendency rather than having left them behind. That might be unfair, and as I say I often find his analysis useful - and of course he's not responsible for anything the people he used to organise with do. But... he still moves in a lot of the same circles - panellist on the Moral Maze, a regular named speaker at the Batttle of Ideas... hard to shake the feeling. So I was wondering if there had been much more detail about his criticism of the faux egalitarian agenda, and how it's found it's way to prominence in the UK in the last decade or so.

 

[alsoknownas]

The most vigorous and vocal advocates of the Faux Egalitarian Agenda he outlines in the article are his former comrades-in-arms...

Interesting. Pardon my ignorance, but did the RCP itself completely change course at one point? Are the people you're talking about complete convertniks like Truss (assuming she ever held left wing views as an adult - not sure if she did or not) ?

My family were quite involved in MIlitant at the time, so would have probably been viewed as 'co-opted' by the likes of RCP.

I found this (from Wiki, about RCP) odd:

 

[chilango]

The RCP had, by the time I firstencountered them in the early 90s, moved from their Trot origins to a contrarian-for-the-hell-of-it tryp position infused with an enthusiasm for the kind of libertarianism of the right.

Would be interesting to know when they first started getting funded by the likes of the Koch brothers.

 

[8ball]

I remember being on an anti-Nazi demo around 1994 and the RCP contingent on my bus had clearly missed the memo about being right-wing at that point.

 

[chilango]

I remember being on an anti-Nazi demo around 1994 and the RCP contingent on my bus had clearly missed the memo about being right-wing at that point.

At the big Welling demo they were greeting people getting off coaches with clipboards and arguments about why we shouldn't be having demos like this.

 

[8ball]

At the big Welling demo they were greeting people getting off coaches with clipboards and arguments about why we shouldn't be having demos like this.

I'm now wondering whether this was a small hold-out. There were only two of them.
It wasn't the Welling one - no trouble at all. Was early summer.

 

[hitmouse]

Interesting. Pardon my ignorance, but did the RCP itself completely change course at one point? Are the people you're talking about complete convertniks like Truss (assuming she ever held left wing views as an adult - not sure if she did or not) ?

For a shortish summary, see:
The Revolutionary Communist Party, Living Marxism and the road to free speech absolutism
The RCP's long march from anti-imperialist outsiders to the doors of Downing Street
If you feel like a longer read, Who Are They? Jenny Turner reports from the Battle of Ideas is the classic.

 

[alsoknownas]

At the big Welling demo they were greeting people getting off coaches with clipboards and arguments about why we shouldn't be having demos like this.

I was at that demo, blissfully ignorant to all that!

 

[chilango]

I'm now wondering whether this was a small hold-out. There were only two of them.
It wasn't the Welling one - no trouble at all. Was early summer.

I guess some of their members were more peripheral. As late as 94 I met at couple of RCP members at Earth First! stuff - despite their organisation's virulent anti-environmentalist turn.

 

[killer b]

Interesting. Pardon my ignorance, but did the RCP itself completely change course at one point? Are the people you're talking about complete convertniks like Truss (assuming she ever held left wing views as an adult - not sure if she did or not) ?

Truss wasn't involved with the RCP (as far as I know!), although she was a Lib Dem at university.

The RCP (or it's successor organisation/s) did change course, and it's members & ex members changed course wholesale - Malik is something of an outlier, at least as far as the high-profile members are concerned.

 

[alsoknownas]

For a shortish summary, see:
The Revolutionary Communist Party, Living Marxism and the road to free speech absolutism
The RCP's long march from anti-imperialist outsiders to the doors of Downing Street
If you feel like a longer read, Who Are They? Jenny Turner reports from the Battle of Ideas is the classic.

Perfect. Thanks.

 

[alsoknownas]

Truss wasn't involved with the RCP (as far as I know!), although she was a Lib Dem at university.

Yeah, I was more thinking about her lefty folks, and being dragged to meetings as a kid and that.

 

[hitmouse]

Truss wasn't involved with the RCP (as far as I know!), although she was a Lib Dem at university.

The RCP (or it's successor organisation/s) did change course, and it's members & ex members changed course wholesale - Malik is something of an outlier, at least as far as the high-profile members are concerned.

Thinking about it, Heartfield has a kind of in-betweeny position - I don't think he's anywhere near as respected on the left as Malik, but I think he does kind of argue "AS A MARXIST" a fair bit and seems kind of more involved with lefty debates than most of that lot. Published a fairly lefty-sounding book on Zero in the last decade, and I think before Zero went really down the drain, that sort of thing.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Whilst this focuses on BLM it’s also a contribution to the debate about the personalisation of political outlooks, a marked retreat away from battles and struggles happening literally in the street/workplace round the corner and the sense that, at root, much of what is termed as ID politics is a globalised and performative process that “obliterates national political cultures, and even their own traditions of anti-racism, in favor of a US template that hardly ever maps onto local antagonisms”.

A liminal opting out from the grind of contingent and uphill battles closer to home in favour of some imagined participation in a battle thousands of miles away. The article is spot on about the importation of American language and symbols and about the nostalgia that perhaps makes this form of ‘politics’ attractive for whom politics is an intensely personal structure of feeling

The Triumph of American Idealism

In worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, protestors are fantasizing their participation in America's problems, and in the process ignoring their own.

www.damagemag.com

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Does Malik ever recognise the role of his former comrades in the RCP with their role in the shaping of the faux egalitarian agenda of Truss' speech?

Why don’t you ask him? He normally replies to tweets it seems. To be fair to him, if I’d been in the RCP I’d prefer to forget it had ever happened too....

 

[ManchesterBeth]

fuck national political cultures though. It was those very national political cultures which opened up the playing field for identity politics - and, really, America's imperialism when it comes to idpol, but the left is too unwilling to criticise the nation state - even though the class relationship is present within the value form as such.

I like to perversely misquote the afropessimists on this. to see class is to see all class everything. Not to see nation, or even state anti-racism.

I'm surprised more people haven't read this re blm: Why Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati Is Changing Its Name

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Thinking about it, Heartfield has a kind of in-betweeny position - I don't think he's anywhere near as respected on the left as Malik, but I think he does kind of argue "AS A MARXIST" a fair bit and seems kind of more involved with lefty debates than most of that lot. Published a fairly lefty-sounding book on Zero in the last decade, and I think before Zero went really down the drain, that sort of thing.

Everyone can be a marxist these days, including those who argue that we must respect the will of a popular democratic referendum of 'the people.' 'The people' of course is an abstraction of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and has no grounding in the writings of Marx, but hey-ho.

 

[8ball]

I'm surprised more people haven't read this re blm: Why Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati Is Changing Its Name

Nope, haven't read it.
Reading it now...

 

[killer b]

Why don’t you ask him? He normally replies to tweets it seems. To be fair to him, if I’d been in the RCP I’d prefer to forget it had ever happened too....

nah, it's a question he'll get asked often enough. If there's no answer to it already out there, then I doubt I'd get one direct. Plus I deleted my politics twitter account and I don't want to end up getting sucked back in on my music account.

If he wanted to forget his membership of RCP then why appear at their conferences and write for their publications? (he hasn't admittedly had a byline in Spiked! since 2009, but it's not as if it wasn't clear then what they were about)

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Nope, haven't read it.
Reading it now...

important point here:

This was a huge blow to the struggle for Black trans rights, because it fit perfectly into the false, transphobic narrative that that marginalized grouping has “an agenda” at odds with Black liberation for all. While BLM is an organization that centers Black queer and trans rights, it DOES NOT represent queer and trans Black people as a whole.

Families, who were very gracious under those conditions, were pushed so far out of the conference politically that even their workshops (which were informative and powerful) were sideline issues and a tiny percentage of workshops on the whole. It would have been very easy to weave the important questions of gender sovereignty into the event in an organic and meaningful way. It was a moment that could have educated layers of people new to that struggle. Instead, it caused a veneer of resentment.
There have been similar stories of betrayal told by families and activists involved in fights from California to Boston and from to Minneapolis and Baltimore.
Furthermore, in every police brutality case we’ve witnessed, BLM refuses to call for the jailing of killer cops. This is a universal demand of families whose loved ones have been killed by police.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

If he wanted to forget his membership of RCP then why appear at their conferences and write for their publications? (he hasn't admittedly had a byline in Spiked! since 2009, but it's not as if it wasn't clear then what they were about)

Friendships and old loyalties? When I left the militant I remained in its periphery for two years because there were people in it who were mates and who I rated and respected even though I’d concluded Trotskyism and the endless Party building was shite

 

[hitmouse]

important point here:
...Furthermore, in every police brutality case we’ve witnessed, BLM refuses to call for the jailing of killer cops. This is a universal demand of families whose loved ones have been killed by police.

This might be off topic, but fwiw that point actually sort of makes me feel a bit more sympathetic to them, and makes BLM national sound a bit more in tune with where the movement's arrived at this year. I mean, if your argument isn't just about a few bad apples but about an entire system, if you aim to be an abolitionist or whatever, then you do sound a bit silly asking for the Good Cops to arrest the bad cops so the Good Prosecutors can prosecute them and then sentence them to the Good Prisons. No?

 

[8ball]

Good Prisons?

 

[ManchesterBeth]

This might be off topic, but fwiw that point actually sort of makes me feel a bit more sympathetic to them, and makes BLM national sound a bit more in tune with where the movement's arrived at this year. I mean, if your argument isn't just about a few bad apples but about an entire system, if you aim to be an abolitionist or whatever, then you do sound a bit silly asking for the Good Cops to arrest the bad cops so the Good Prosecutors can prosecute them and then sentence them to the Good Prisons. No?

I think police abolition on its own is an empty and abstract demand. However when that criticism turns into voting for Joe Biden...

So yes, I do have criticisms of that article which can't seem to break from the amerocentrism of BLM national.

I do object to the concept that what we need is more national political culture though. All that will do is resurrect old ghosts of social democracy and reinvert identity politics, not abolish it. Like it or not, the yearning for localisation is petit-bourgeois shopkeeper ideology. We live in a globalised international capitalist system at the height of its maturity and even quantitatively different to what it was 70 years ago. Our struggle can only start out from the international. There are relatively few (remote) parts of the world which are pre-capitalist at the moment.